A Ritual Celebration

NEWPORT NEWS — Members of the congregation at Christ United Methodist Church rise early every Easter to see Christ's tomb, which turns out to be empty.

The stone was rolled away.

OK, it's really painted canvas and plywood, but it no longer obstructs the entrance to the makeshift tomb anyway.

The men of Christ United Methodist Church had donned Roman legionnaire outfits and guarded their stage backdrop tomb during the shivering evenings, a fire warming their feet.

They've done this every Easter season for five years now. Cars would pass the outdoor spectacle; some would nearly crash.

Sometimes someone would actually stop and ask the legionnaires from what sort of collection had they ordered their spring fashions -- and why?

Those anachronistic encounters were more frequent prior to this year, when construction closed off Deep Creek Road and kept the legionnaires lonely, made them the Maytag repairmen of costume drama.

But there are no legionnaires left now, at 7 a.m. Easter Sunday, that stone having been rolled away. There are just a man playing a small keyboard and a woman leading about 60 cold people, noses to photocopied lyrics, in a quiet hymn. The kids sit up front on folding chairs. The adults stand. Some wear ties. Some wear baseball caps.

The Rev. Bruce Carper, a bright-eyed guy in a gray suit and sporting a brush of a moustache, next leads a prayer for troops overseas.

We enjoy so much freedom as Americans, he says. But the real reason to celebrate, he tells them, is freedom in Christ.

"Why," Carper asks, "would we get up so early?" After all, it's "0-dark-thirty" on a Sunday.

"What motivated you to come here?"

"My wife," one guy mumbles.

Carper continues. You visit, say, a monument in the nation's capital to feel closer to the yesteryear event it celebrates. But visiting the tomb of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem or even his backdrop in Newport News is different, Carper tells them.

"God's power BLASTED Jesus right out of the grave!" Carper says. "We want to celebrate today, not a historical fact."

Everyone sings again: He lives, He lives, He lives, Christ Je-sus lives to-day! He walks with me and talks with me along life's narrow way.

Carper's service is short, barely 30 minutes. He prays and the crowd breaks up, some driving past the orange detour signs and back home. More shuffle into the church for breakfast and those other divine gifts, heating and electricity.

Inside they find folding tables and helpings of casserole and fruit cocktail, and a corner harboring the colors of Boy Scout Troop 43.

Carper says the tomb display went up every year before he ever got here and figures it's a good idea still. Christmas has lights and plastic reindeer on the roof -- and for those of faith, nativity scenes.

Easter just doesn't get the same amount of installations, with the possible exceptions of his tomb and his neighbor's Easterzilla.

"This lady has an 8-foot bunny I have to look at every morning," he says.

"That's part of our American culture. To me, anything that gets people thinking about the holiday is good. God can use anything to draw people." But Carper doesn't want people to forget what those Christian holidays actually celebrate, either.

They mean a lot to him. The 57-year-old used to be a big-bucks chemist for Newport News Shipbuilding. Then, at age 32, he became a Christian. He decided to go to seminary two years later. He and his wife up and sold nearly everything they had at a yard sale. It all went in one day.

All that stuff, and all these years later, it does the pastor good to see a few new faces in front of the tomb on a nippy Easter.

Church member Doug Staples had noticed a few himself. "The tomb probably pulls in some locals," Staples figures.

It even pulled him in, or at least pulled him in early. "I usually come at 11," he says. "I don't usually get up this early in the morning on a Sunday."

Keeping score by food, the turnout wasn't bad.

"We had about 10 casseroles," church member June Yurkiw says from the kitchen. "We went through about five." And there were later Easter services to go.

Outside, earlier, church member Jim Rentz was folding up his keyboard and explaining the story behind the tomb. Years ago, a previous pastor had asked Rentz to dress up as a Roman and deliver an Easter monologue.

He did. Then next year came the tomb, and a tradition was born.

"We've had people from all denominations and faiths come by and ask about it. We've had people come to faith. As long as it serves a purpose, we'll keep doing it."

Their shrine is made of planks, plywood, chicken wire, canvas, painted newspapers and garbage bags.

Not exactly granite, but it works.

When asked if it was his job, then, to move the faux stone every Easter, Rentz went blank.

"Always by the time I get here, it's moved. I don't know who does it. It gets done." *

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